May 21, 2014

WORTH REPEATING: Todd Akin Was Not a Tea Partyer, and the Tea Party is Not Costing Republicans the Senate. “I’d say you can only blame ‘the Tea Party’ for a net loss of two Senate seats since 2010. That’s a period during which it helped send Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul to the upper House — during which ‘establishment’ candidates like Denny Rehberg, Heather Wilson, Rick Berg, Josh Mandel, George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Carly Fiorina, and Dino Rossi totally failed to win seats.”

Well as a Hoosier, I face palmed when Mourdock walked right off the deep end with his 'God intended it to happen' comment. Yes I heard all the excuses about it being an inarticulate statement but I don't care. First, if you're a Tea Party candidate, stick with out of control spending and reducing government. When asked about abortion just say you're glad your mom didn't get one and end that discussion.

1st, you don't win them all. 2nd, in Delaware and Indiana the GOP primary winner had to run in the November election against both the Democrat opponent AND the GOP establishment, because the GOP establishment preferred to lose instead of supporting the GOP candidate. Neither Luger nor Castle gave any support. 3rd, in Alaska, the corrupt Murkowski regime candidate, daughter Lisa, would have been the GOP candidate, but lost in the primary and ended up winning as an independent so that would seem to be a wash.

Perhaps in Nevada if most of the GOP would have spent more time supporting the GOP candidate (I think Rove was a solid supporter of Angle, to no avail) instead of undermining them behind the scenes there could have been a better chance of success.

It is generally safe to take most comments that support establishment GOP positions (meaning the ones that helped create the bloated federal system we now have) with a grain of salt and believe the opposite....

The RINOs refuse to learn the lessons of 2006. The othering of the TEA Party is the clearest evidence to date of that. S'okay, who needs the Republican base when it's all that stops Obama from appointing a majority to the Supreme Court? Then the RINOs will have an excuse for not being able to stop the Prog/Marxist agenda.

I've heard a theory that the TPM (Tea Party Movement) claims or is given more credit for the red wave of 2010 than it deserves or its apologists give it. That the dominant reason for the red wave of 2010 is that a Democrat was President.

Do we believe that or not, and why?

I will say that 2014 is an acid test for that theory. If the TPM doesn't have much success in the primary season after it's over, but there's still a red wave in November, then that theory about 2010 will probably prove to be correct.

Now that Oregon has had its primary...They just nominated the opposite of akin, running for the GOP.

Finally, the GOP selects a nominee, in spite of their abortion views. Wehby has strengths and weaknesses, but they are subjectively evaluated by voters. There are a ton of reasons why she has a chance to win, or lose, but I really like her chances.

I think what you're trying to say is that she bought an ad attacking Todd just before the Republican primary. Yes, we were cheering when that ad came out, however, it's not the only reason we won the primary. I now think that Claire's ad against us before the primary happened because her campaign was privy to polling data that we didn't even have access to that showed Todd surging late. Remember all those chicken sandwiches we were buying in late July and early August 2012? That issue played into our hands, too.

I can't confirm that the funding part is true, but I think there was a push to skew the polls after Akin's gaffe. There was a period when he was *considering* withdrawing...polls showed that he had a much better chance than what turned out to be the case; as a result, he was convinced to stay in the race. The polls, IIRC, were done by Democratic-leaning organizations like PPP.

You don't know the whole story, I do. It's just that even now, I'm not at liberty to disclose the whole thing.

Todd was very very willing to drop out, but there was one huge hurdle in the way that had nothing to do with anyone's ego, and as far as that goes, Todd was probably the most un-egotistical politician I've ever met. He was one of the few people who got into politics for the classical quintessential Civics 101 textbooks reasons.

When I'm finally free to tell the whole story, you'll be mad, and you'll be mad at someone, but it won't be who you're mad at right now.

It explains why establishment Republicans are so accommodative to the White House demands, such as on immigration reform. The IRS did a good job nipping the Tea Party in the bud saving Boehner, McConnell, and other old guards They'd rather enjoy the GOP's permanent minority status as long as they themselves could feed at the trough.

That Akin was not a Tea Partier, is exactly right. Everyone in Missouri knew that he was Huckabee's boy. Sarah Steelman, who lives not far from me, was the Tea Party favorite - and she didn't do very well in that primary.

And all you had to do was attend one Sarah Steelman event in 2012 to understand why she didn't win, and I went behind enemy lines to infiltrate several of hers to gather intelligence. The poor dear couldn't string three words together coherently. She started the season the front runner, mainly because of gender and that she had already won statewide office, and I was left SMH wondering how her front runner status was going to last.

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